


My Love Is like the Night

by PiloteRebelle



Series: After the War [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Adult RAD, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Force Ghosts, Jedi Finn (Star Wars), M/M, Shara Bey's Ring, The First Order Still Sucks, There Will Be Fluff Just Hang In There
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:13:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PiloteRebelle/pseuds/PiloteRebelle
Summary: Poe and Finn have an enormous fight, which leads to reconsidering their relationship and their future. You know, fluffy stuff.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: After the War [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767100
Comments: 59
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from “Like the Night” by Moonbeau; modified/inspired by lyrics are also used in this chapter.

Finn was lying flat on his back, chest heaving, staring up at the cavernous ceiling of the training room with arms and legs akimbo. He thought through the short list of “Most Exhausting Moments of My Life” (private training sessions with Captain Phasma, feverish and furious; the fifty-hour epic of his defection to the Resistance; the entire week surrounding Exegol, which was still mostly a blur) and decided that this, yes, this was the most exhausted he could ever remember being. His head felt hollowed out, like his brains had been scoured off the inside of his skull by the pressure-wash of hours spent in intense Force meditation. His limbs felt heavy and almost disconnected, like enormous slabs of heavy, gnarled wood had been grafted onto his shoulders and hips. He could still feel the little scrap of red fabric in the palm of his hand, the little rivers of Force energy filtering along the heavy wooden beams in the roof three stories above him, the song of The Presence in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t move.

“You did so well, Finn,” Rey was saying soothingly. She sat cross-legged above his head, watching him breathe. “That was your best run on the course yet.”

“Thanks,” he managed to croak, forcing his muscles to cooperate in lifting his left hand to return her lightsaber. 

“You know…” she started, but Finn cut her off with a sharp exhaling grunt.

“Not yet.” He took a deep inhale, closing his eyes and concentrating on the steady beating of his heart, until his pulse slowed. It was quiet, dim, and cool on the stone floor, and Rey’s energy was radiating her usual calming blue. There was a good chance he could fall asleep here. The Presence started to sound something like a lullabye. “I know you think I’m ready to build it. Maybe I am. But…”

“If you’re not ready, you’re not ready,” said Rey, holding up her free hand with a gesture of submission. She clipped her lightsaber back to her belt. “But I think this proves you don’t really need the course anymore. And I can see how this saber is starting to frustrate you; the grip is too short, the balance is wrong. It wasn’t made for you, after all.” Her eyes flashed as she smiled.

Finn snuffled a light laugh. “Maybe you shouldn’t have ditched two perfectly good lightsabers in a hole in the sand, then.”

She smiled wider. “Maybe. But it’s equally possible for my apprentice to stop dithering and go collect his crystal.”

“Not yet,” Finn repeated. He let the little scrap of cloth fall through his fingers to the floor and sat up, groaning at how sore his legs were already.

Finn had always thrown himself wholly into challenges. It was how he survived the First Order, rising and thriving on training his body, adapting his mind, compiling tactics and strategies and weapons while his muscles tore and reknit over and over again. It was how he threw himself into the Resistance, determined to catch up, determined not to be a burden, drawing details from the back of his mind and connecting them like puzzle pieces to sort through the fog of confusion and adventure and energy. Jedi training was an entirely new set of goals and challenges, and in the last three weeks, he had ratcheted up the intensity by exponential measures until he reached the new borders of what his mind and body could accomplish. Pausing at the new limit, until he found a way to push past it and expand once again. Finn had always found a way to keep expanding.

Still, the day had been unusually difficult for several reasons. 

Eumike, the youngest of Rey’s new students, had an outburst during morning movements that seared a blinding, bright blast of pure white rage into the back of his mind and pulsed a dull headache for the rest of the day. 

Rey had then charged him with training Deonis on Force-pulls, since it still took intense concentration for Finn to overcome his natural reticence. Deonis was seventeen years old and impossible in an entirely different way, blasé and careless. He pulled items to him through the Force like it was his birthright. (Finn wasn't really sure who was supposed to be training who for this task.) That took the dull pulse of his headache into a stinging throb. 

Then, Rey and Finn were sparring with the training sabers. A cache had been found in an underground storage cavern near the lower kitchens, fifteen pseudo-weapons of different lengths and weights and heights, covered in cobwebs and centuries of dust, their material composition and construction lost to time. Eumike and Deonis cheered them on. After a little while, Rey had given him her lightsaber, still somehow managing to hold her own while only armed with a training saber. She had idly mused, trying to jar his concentration, about what color his would be. 

Finally, Rey goaded him into one more turn on the obstacle course. It had been built in the central hall of the Old Temple, in what had surely been a place for ceremony and display when its halls were filled with Jedi Knights and Dedicats, but Rey had never had any use for ceremony or display and Finn had seen enough of it in the First Order to last several lifetimes. Rough-hewn wooden beams, still sturdy after all these years, towering above the stonework mosaic floor. It was large enough to grow smaller species of oak and maple, likely trimmed and shaped with great care until the Temple was abandoned and the branches set to rambling. There was a small channel of water that ran in and out of the hall and swelled when it rained. 

Rey clasped his hand and helped him climb to his feet, nimble as always. “Take tomorrow off,” she said. “Have a hot bath. With or without Poe.”

“I want to  _ sleep _ ,” said Finn, with a fervor that required more energy than he had to give. “Preferably with Poe, but not, you know,  _ with _ Poe. At first. Because I’m tired.” Though Poe had a way of drawing his last reserves out of him, as though his own relentless stores of energy and arousal were transferrable.

“More information than I need,” said Rey, again holding her hands palm-out. Then she squeezed his shoulder. “I hope I’m not-”

“You’re not,” Finn interrupted her again. “I know. And you’re not wrong,” he added. Almost on instinct, he tilted his head slightly behind him, away from the conversation here and again toward The Presence that had been silently calling through his mind. It had taken him a week to accept that The Presence wasn't merely his imagination, and another week to follow the call to the mouth of the cave. It was a small, dark entrance in the rolling hills above the Temple, guarded by the roots of a particularly old and gnarled oak tree. He hadn't gone further. The Presence hadn’t gone away. “But I just don’t-”

“I know,” said Rey. Then she smiled. “I suppose we’ve had this conversation so many times, we don’t even need the words anymore.”

“I always like talking to you,” said Finn. He slid a hand around her narrow shoulders to give her a one-armed hug, and then yawned. “But I’m going home before I pass out.”

“An excellent plan,” she nodded.

“You’ll feed the kids?” He looked back at her, eyebrows raised. Rey frequently forgot to eat, or got by on the small dehydrated food rations she squirreled away in her quarters to gnaw on in the middle of the night. (She stored her food caches elsewhere, too. Finn had once found a small portion of a ration bar, cut into a neat square and packaged carefully in new wrapping, stuck between the pages of a Jedi text in the small library.) Poe often made communal meals in the lower kitchens, somehow managing to calm Eumike into singing quiet little chants as she grated root vegetables and draw Deonis into a raucous discussion about swoop racing while he set the table, all at the same time. But for the last week, Poe and Chewie had been putting in long hours to refurbish an old HWK-1000 freighter as a special contract job for the repair shop in town, an easy way to pick up credits for supplementing their grocery bill and new parts for the  _ Falcon. _

This week, the lower kitchens had been cold and dark. Eumike had been increasingly anxious, Deonis increasingly mercurial, and Rey and Finn training harder than ever before and therefore even less focused on the mundanity of eating or sleeping. Finn made a mental note to talk to Rey about hiring a permanent cook. Depending on Poe to manage meals, in addition to his ship repair business and his own projects, wasn’t exactly fair and clearly neither Rey nor Finn were fully up to the task. The current arrangement wasn’t sustainable.

But that was also a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, Finn needed rest. He gave Rey another squeeze around the shoulders and shuffled out of the cavernous hall on leaden feet. 

Despite its large size and the chill of the carved stone that was worked everywhere into the walls and floor, the Temple had a relaxing and comfortable feel. Finn thought it was the combination of natural materials: cobb and plaster, oak wood, both living and carved, hand-poured glasswork. There were enormous windows everywhere to let in the light and encourage growth in the many planter boxes built into the walls as though to mimic a natural forest floor, cozy nooks at the perfect height to place a lantern, little reading benches in quiet corners. Finn found it enormously peaceful.

The quarters were generously-sized, too. Poe and Finn had a few rooms on the south side of the Temple: a bedroom, a living room, a small personal kitchen with a hotplate and a little cooler. (He suspected these quarters had been for long-term visiting guests at one time, as Rey’s chosen rooms were much more spartan, and they had found old versions of communal living barracks elsewhere in the Temple.) Large windows to watch the sun rise in the morning, a balcony for Poe to grow the cutting of the villhea vine he brought back from Yavin IV, bright fuchsia pink blossoms already cascading over the trellis he’d built, soaking up the spring and fall rain.

When the door to their quarters slid open, Finn was only partially surprised to find them dark and empty. Poe had been putting in extra hours on that freighter, after all, though he was usually hungry and cooking something by the time the sun was starting to tint orange and pink at the edge of their kitchen window.

_ <Good evening, Master-Finn!> _

Having BB-8 home without Poe, though, was a surprise. “Hey Bee, where’s Poe?” Finn frowned as the little droid rolled out of the shadows from behind the sofa. 

_ <Unable to divulge location. I am instructed to assist in your search, but only in reference to the clues provided,> _ said the droid. Finn thought the beeping sounded slightly reluctant, though that could be his own lack of excitement in whatever was going on here that wasn't 'eat a quick meal and fall into bed.'

“Clues?” Finn looked up, just slightly above BB-8’s dome, and saw a lit candle on the low table in front of the sofa. It was a soft, white light, and the warm shadows that it cast on the walls were not dissimilar from the flickering waves of Force energy that ebbed and flowed around Poe while he slept. It reminded Finn of sleeping. And how much he was hoping to do that, soon.

Next to the candle was a little piece of folded flimsi with a small, pink villhea flower drawn on the front next to his name, written in Poe’s cramped, blocky scrawl. “What’s this?”

_ <The first clue. There are six, which I have deemed excessive and will thus help you skip any two you request,> _ said BB-8, and Finn definitely heard reluctance and a bit of apprehension in the beeps this time.

“I don’t understand,” said Finn, opening the piece of flimsi to read:

_ You make me feel like flying, even when I’m on the ground. _

Finn read it three times. “What is this?”

_ <I told Master-Poe they were too vague,> _ said the droid.  _ <Do you wish to skip to the next?> _

“The next what?”

_ <It is a game. Master-Poe has left clues for you to find the next clue. The last clue will lead to Master-Poe.> _

“Seriously? Right now?” As if on cue, Finn’s stomach rumbled. A common side-effect of intensive training with Rey was that he, too, usually forgot to eat when there was no regimented schedule to require a meal and no Poe hollering up from the caverns that lunch was ready. He hadn’t eaten anything since early morning. “BeeBee-Ate, I don’t think I have the energy for all this. I was planning on going to bed early.”

_ <I will assist Master-Finn in locating Master-Poe,> _ said BB-8.  _ <The first clue relates to flying; specifically, being on the ground when thinking about flying.> _

Finn stared at the droid, then the shadows on the wall, then the early pinkish tint of the setting sun, and then looked at the piece of flimsi again. “Does he mean the X-wing?”

_ <Master-Finn is very clever, even when exhausted> _ said BB-8. He immediately began to roll toward the door, narrowly avoiding Finn’s feet.  _ <Oh, and Master-Poe found another one of your blasters under the sofa when he was cleaning. You will need to replace it.> _

Finn’s cheeks immediately flushed, deeply embarrassed. “Uh, thanks Bee. Did you tell him…”

_ <It was not necessary for me to contribute> _ said BB-8.  _ <He has placed it in the locked closet near the training hall, with the ones from the desk drawer, the kitchen drawer, the refresher cupboard, and lower kitchen cauldron.> _

“Wait, when did he find that one? Never mind,” Finn shut himself up hurriedly, worrying at the piece of flimsi in his pocket as he followed the droid around the third-floor promenade to the stone steps (the same ones he had just agonizingly, exhaustingly, hauled himself up a few minutes earlier). Finn was running out of ways to discreetly stow blasters in their quarters, even with the one that Poe allowed him to keep under his side of the mattress and the one in the cabinet just inside the doorway to their quarters. Poe hadn’t objected to having a few pieces of protection on hand, but after Eumike had arrived, he seemed more safety-conscious than before, insisting that dangerous weapons needed to be locked away. Finn hadn’t been able to convince him that Eumike was training to be a far more dangerous weapon than any blaster, and was running out of places in his mind to brick up the concerned objections and isn’t-this-behavior-a-little-strange-no-it’s-perfectly-reasonable second-guessing. He’d rather not think about it too closely right now. He’d take a few blasters back out of the locked closet once Poe left for the ship in the morning.

The second candle, with another piece of flimsi and another little hand-drawn flower, was tucked under the wheels of the X-wing’s nose. 

Poe had been delighted to find the run-down T-70 at a local auction two months after arriving on Kamparas. Now parked alongside the  _ Millenium Falcon _ in the meadow just south of the oak grove, he had tinkered and modified the ship as time allowed, trading tools with Chewie and running acrobatic test-flights overhead. But first, before he’d so much as opened the engine hatch after flying it home, he had painted it bright, Resistance-flight-suit orange, decaled with white Rebel phoenixes bordered in Force-blue. It was visible in the sky for miles, surrounded by waves of shining yellow happiness.

The new clue read:

_ When I think about you, I see stars (and I think about you all the time). _

“Help, Bee, my brain doesn’t work anymore,” said Finn, after reading the clue twice.

_ <Where would you go to look at stars with Master-Poe?> _

Finn groaned. “The roof garden? Is he serious? I just got all the way down here…”

_ <Do you wish to skip?> _

“Is the next one on a ground level?”

_ <Affirmative.> _

“Then yeah, Bee, I want to skip climbing up to the roof.”

The next clue was down in the lower kitchens, but this set of winding stone steps was only a half-flight off the main training room. Eumike and Deonis were eating sandwiches with gleeful eyes and smug expressions, unusually quiet and still. Finn noticed that they were sitting next to each other, presumably so that they could see him the moment he came through the door; and taking tiny bites, presumably so they didn’t finish their meal before he arrived to find the clue they were guarding. 

“Where is it?” he asked, trying not to sound irritated.

“Where’s what?” asked Deonis with poorly-feigned ignorance, but Eumike immediately jumped up and pointed to the stonework counter across from her seat at the table, wiggling a little with excitement.

Finn sighed. Another candle, another sweet riddle, and it was difficult not to ask Eumike for a bite of her sandwich. He waited until he had trudged back up the steps from the lower kitchen into one of the back end supply hallways before he asked BB-8 to skip this clue, as he suspected it involved going into the second-floor library. Then again, if Poe had left a burning candle near Rey’s ancient Jedi texts…

Another sigh, another weary traipse through the enormous compound of wood and stone, to another candle. Thankfully, Poe had put it in the window (Where had he gotten all these candles? When? How many?) away from the flammable shelves of books.

This one read:

_ Every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, I love you. _

“The clock,” Finn said immediately. There was an enormous, ancient timepiece on the north side of the training hall near Rey’s quarters. It towered above Finn’s head, curved wood, forest-green lacquer, with a golden orb suspended in the middle still swaying to the chrono of a timing system that no longer existed. “Bee, can you just tell me what that one says? I’m…” he almost felt too tired to complete the thought. He felt vaguely guilty at his ingratitude. They were sweet, these notes, of course they were. But this was just not a good time.

_ <The oak grove,> _ BB-8 said immediately.

Finn closed his eyes as he gave another sigh. Of course. If he had stopped for even a few seconds to think about it, it was the only obvious choice. He could have gone straight there. Trying to force himself to stay pleasant, or to keep the grumpiness that came from exhaustion and hunger shoved down into his stomach and out of his mind, he put the last clue into his pocket with the others. “Okay. Please tell me he has something to eat out there.”

_ <Affirmative.> _

It was a lovely evening: warm, but with the promise of enough chill to make blankets or jackets a comforting prospect once the sun went down. The oak leaves were turning from pale green to a shining burnished bronze that glowed even brighter in the golden late-afternoon light. The ground crunched under his feet from scores of acorns scattered over the bed of last year’s brown leaves and underbrush. It would turn cold soon, once the trees had lost their leaves, though it hadn’t snowed during the last winter. But there had been several days of frost on the windows, when Poe was more reluctant than usual to leave the warm nest of blankets in their bed. Finn had liked to see the icy-blue coating on all the bare branches and the gray clouds in the sky. He had never lived on a planet long enough to watch the seasons change.

Even though it was not quite dark, he saw the candlelight from a few paces away. Finn recognized the clearing immediately. An early spring walk had discovered it: a perfectly circular bed of spongy yellow moss surrounded by an even ring of trees, just north of the Temple complex to give an unblocked view of the setting sun. The clearing was covered in candles placed on stumps, logs, any squarish piece of ship equipment or tools wide enough to present a flat surface. The oak leaves glowed in the yellow light, and the acorns wriggled with shadows.

In the middle of the circle of candles stood Poe, barefoot and beaming. “Hey! You made it!” he called. He had on his nicest shirt, dark red sleeves rolled back to the elbows, his hair wet but combed, just starting to curl on the back of his neck as it dried. His face was still shiny from a recent shave. There was a thick, colorful blanket thrown onto the ground, worked in vibrant turquoise and yellow, and stacked with plates of food. In the center of the blanket, a bouquet of cascading pink villhea flowers in a milky-blue caf mug, and a bottle of champagne in a scrubbed-up parts bucket.

Finn didn’t dare cross the beautiful blanket tableau with his filthy boots, but before he could reach down to untie them, Poe had darted across with a glass of champagne and a solid kiss on his mouth. “Happy anniversary!”

“What?” said Finn, trying not to drop the glass while he untied his boot with one hand. “Wait, what did you say?”

“Happy anniversary,” Poe repeated, smiling at him under dark eyelashes, and kissed him again, slower this time. Then he pulled back and started chattering, fast and bright. “So this is  _ really _ good champagne. I had Karé send it to me from Luashe. And check it out! Four course meal, made entirely of sandwiches!” He waved his arm at the plates of food, bouncing on his toes a little as he pulled Finn onto the blanket by the hand (never mind that Finn still hadn’t fully untied his shoelaces). “There’s this mushroom-walnut spread for an appetizer sandwich, and then a salad sandwich with lots of vegetables and that citrus-seed dressing you like. Okay, and the main course is roasted tip-yip with the spicy sauce my dad uses for barbecue, and dessert is a chocolate cookie sandwich with junaberries and cream. Be proud of me, I didn’t eat any of the cookies. Okay, one broke in half and I had to eat it to make sure it tasted good, but that’s it!” Poe’s smile was full of teeth, as usual in these moments when one of his surprises came to fruition, with flushed red cheeks and rosy-lavender pride in his Force colors.

Finn realized, after staring at the trays of food for a moment, that he hadn’t really made a response. “Back up. What’s a...what is this?” 

“It’s our anniversary, babe!” Poe slid an arm around his waist. “It’s been a year since Yavin. Since you kissed me, on Yavin.” He punctuated the statement with another kiss, a soft one to the edge of his mouth.

Finn just looked at him, blankly.

Poe tried again. “We’ve officially been together for a year.”

“And that’s...a thing?”

“Of course it’s a thing!” Poe laughed. “It’s like a birthday, only for you and me. It’s our relationship’s birthday.”

Finn clenched his teeth together. “So you wanted to surprise me,” he said slowly, “With the concept of an anniversary?”

“What? Poe frowned a little. “No, this is the surprise,” and he gestured down at the food again.

“Poe,” Finn started, trying to keep it together. He really had been trying, but he could hear the chill in his voice, knew he sounded cold. He  _ felt _ cold. And angry. Extremely, frigidly, viscerally angry. “Don’t you think that was something you should  _ tell me _ about?”

“The surprise?” Poe blinked.

“The  _ anniversary _ ,” Finn spat out.

“I don’t understand,” said Poe, shifting to the side and letting his hand drop away from Finn’s waist (possibly to avoid the look of livid fury in Finn’s eyes).

“Don’t play dumb, Dameron,” said Finn. “It kinda seems like something celebrating the fact that we’ve been together for an entire  _ year _ is something I should have  _ known about _ .”

“You…” Poe frowned again. “Wait, are you mad?”

“Of course I’m mad!”

“It’s...there isn’t--” Poe was clearly confused. “Are you mad at  _ me _ ?”

“Is there anyone else here?” Finn noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that BB-8 had wisely rolled behind one of the larger oak trees.

“You’re mad at me...because it’s our anniversary?”

“No! I’m mad because-- Are you being like this on purpose?” Finn asked.

“I swear to you, Finn, I am genuinely confused,” said Poe.

“You seriously need me to explain why it’s kind of shitty to just spring this on me?”

“Spring what? I don’t-- I was just trying to do something nice for you. For-- for fun,” said Poe. He tried to cross his arms protectively across his chest, but was stymied by the nearly-full glass of champagne in his hand. “Are you-- Is it that-- Anniversaries aren’t that big a deal. Maybe ten years or twenty-five or something, but I didn’t think you’d-”

“How is this not a big deal?” Finn snapped. “You put all this together, without even talking to me. Is there a separate co-anniversary day that I’m supposed to know about, too?”

“Why am I in trouble?” said Poe, finally letting some irritation creep into his voice. “I did something nice. Why am I getting in trouble for doing something nice?”

“When do I get to do something nice for you?” Finn countered. “I can’t read your-- I  _ won’t _ read your mind. You’re always doing this.” He stalked to the edge of the blanket, pacing just outside the circle and relishing the hard bone-like crunch of the acorns under his boots. 

“Doing what?”

“This!” Finn gestured at the romantic setting again, spilling some of the champagne onto his fingers. Then he pulled the handful of love notes out of his pocket with his other hand and let them bounce on his palm. “These...these  _ things! _ I could have at least gotten the flowers.”

“So get me flowers tomorrow,” said Poe. “I've never stopped you from getting me flowers.” He still had his eyebrows crunched low, confused and irritated and hurt, and Finn wasn’t sure if he was seeing it in his face or his colors, and it made him even more angry to realize just how draining and exhausting it was to constantly try to discern the difference, to observe those colors without straying too close to spying on secrets Poe would rather keep hidden, on top of everything else he was already trying to manage. 

“I didn’t know I was supposed to because I didn’t know there was an anniversary!”

“Let me get this straight,” said Poe, slowly and carefully. “You’re mad that I put this together for our anniversary because you didn’t know we’d been together for a year. Why is it my fault that you can’t read a calendar?” 

“It’s not the kriffing calendar, Poe,” said Finn, kicking the edge of one of the oak trees and nearly sputtering out a candle on a nearby stump. “I am so sick and tired of having to have things explained to me all the time. Life Day, Equinox Day, Sol Day, birthday, anniversary, it never fucking  _ stops _ . Can I go, like, a week without getting ambushed by something like this?”

Poe was quiet for a few moments, watching Finn with tensed, rigid shoulders. “Okay. I’m sorry. It was a bad idea, and I apologize. We’ll pack it up.”

“You really don’t understand, do you?”

“No, but whatever it is, I screwed up, so I’m sorry,” said Poe. “Forget it. Just-”

“Please stop looking at me like that,” said Finn.

“Like what?” Poe’s eyes were hardening from hurt to guarded. He always tried to hide it, but Finn could see everything shining through his eyes; he was absolutely transparent, even if it weren’t for the vermillion and the scarlet and the dark rusty-red.

“You get this look on your face, like-- like if anything is less than 100% perfect, if you’re grumpy or I’m tired, or we’re fighting about something stupid, you immediately go into this...like I’m about to leave you unless you do something like this.”

“Wait, now I’m in trouble for trying to be a good boyfriend?” Poe shook his head and breathed out a quiet, “I can’t believe this.”

Finn didn’t let up. “How hard would it have been to say, ‘Hey Finn, our anniversary is next week, what should we do?’ And then I could have figured out what that was on my own. Or I could have asked you, or asked someone else, and someone else could have told me how to surprise you or what’s expected of me. It’s almost like you enjoy the fact that I don’t have a damn clue about anything, so you get to tell me about it first.”

“Whoa!” Poe protested. “Hey, that’s not fair!”

“No, it isn’t!” Finn agreed, still pacing. He felt dangerously close to hitting something, sparks crackling in the back of his mind, near The Presence, a faint daydream of an oak tree splitting in two with a crack of thunder. “None of this is fair! You give me  _ everything _ . My clothes, your family, your friends, your savings,”  _ my name _ . “You gave up your job, there’s a goddamn warrant for you on three systems  _ because of me _ . What do I have to give you back? And don’t say sex! Because that’s all you want in return, right? For me to have sex with you when I come home from training. Like I’m some-- some concubine, or-”

“Concubine?” Poe raised an eyebrow, forcing a laugh. “Okay, buddy, time to cool it with the romance novels.”

“Shut up, Poe!” Finn snapped. “For once in your damn life, just shut up!”

Poe slowly and pointedly closed his mouth, drawing his lips together in a thin line, stapling them tight with his teeth. 

Finn realized he was still holding a half-full glass of champagne, and awkwardly put it down next to one of the wax-dripping candles on an old wire crate. “I’ve had a really shitty day, Poe. I just wanted to go home and sleep, not run all over the Temple looking for-- I know you were just trying to be... but this really wasn’t the right..."

He stopped himself, briefly, just long enough for The Presence in the back of his mind to come singing into the foreground. That demanding, all-encompassing, exhausting Presence. He was so tired of having his mind divided, of shutting things out or letting things in, filtering through colors and feelings and decisions,  _ so many decisions _ . "I’m tired. I’m really tired, Poe. This is...this is too much. It’s just too much. I don’t know that I can do this," waving a hand down at the food at their feet, "...and all that,” gesturing back at the Temple below them, covered in shadows now, “-at the same time. I can’t keep doing this.”

A breeze blew through the circle, sputtering the candles into near-darkness, and when they righted themselves and the stillness returned, Finn noticed that Poe’s colors had muted. Gone quiet. Like he’d uttered a wish, and something had granted it. 

“There’s something I’ve been needing to do,” said Finn, rushing into the blank space, the vacuum that had opened up between them. “By myself. It takes a lot of time, and I have to do it alone, and I’ve been putting it off for weeks because...because…”

Poe’s mouth twitched, like he wanted to finish Finn’s sentence for him, but he didn’t. He stayed quiet, waiting for Finn to sort through the swirl of his thoughts. Not having the colors was so strange but so freeing, like he finally had some clarity without all these extra distractions, it was just Finn and The Presence, and he needed to talk, he needed to-

“I don’t think I can put it off anymore,” Finn heard himself say. “Which means I...Force, I don’t know how to say this…”

“Do you want me to go?” Poe finally asked. His voice was held careful and even, a paltry attempt at monotone.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” said Finn. 

The candles sputtered again with another breeze.

“I don’t know how much time I need,” Finn added, hurriedly. His hand reached up to clutch at the little ring under his shirt. Knew he should probably hand it over, knew that what he was asking meant that he didn’t deserve it any more. “I’m not saying that we should completely-- and I know this is really-- Force, I don’t know how to…”

“You want to take a break,” said Poe, looking down at Finn’s hand clenched in his shirt. Finn hoped he managed not to be visibly irritated at how Poe just  _ knew _ , of course there was a phrase for what he was asking, all of these relationship pitfalls and traps and sinking sands had phrases and words, and they were probably all written down in some calendar.

“Yeah,” Finn nodded. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Because you think I only want you for sex,” Poe continued.

Finn’s anger sparked again. “Did you hear a word of what I just said?”

“Yeah,” said Poe. “I did. You have Jedi stuff to do. You need to do it alone. You think I only do all this romantic stuff to-- to bribe you into being with me, and it’s too much, and you want to take a break. And you don’t want to celebrate anniversaries. I got it. I’m briefed.” He looked down at the glass of champagne in his hand, then drained it quickly. He tossed the empty glass onto the blanket. “I’ll go pack.”

Then he turned and scooped up his boots. Finn didn’t try to stop him. He didn’t say anything. He stared at Poe’s back, watching his muscles tensing under his nice shirt as he worked the laces, trying to see the reds and the purples that Finn knew were there, and somehow knew was  _ still _ there, but it was like when Rey closed her mind, when Rey blocked herself off from the Force. Finn was so distracted by the lack of color, that sudden, blissful absence, that he barely registered when Poe turned around and gestured dismissively down at the blanket of food. “Don’t worry about cleaning that up,” he said. “I’ll come back and deal with it before I leave.” 

“Where will you go?” asked Finn in a small voice.

Poe’s face twisted, and Finn half-expected him to shoot off a flippant, ‘What do you care?’ But Poe swallowed, set his face back into a composed mask, and said simply, “Home.”

And then he walked into the dark, down the hill. Finn sat down on the blanket and watched him go, until he disappeared into the shadows of the trees.


	2. Chapter 2

Poe threw the overnight bag on top of the dresser and began shoving clothes into it as quickly as possible. The key was to keep moving, that had always been the key. Stop moving, and you start thinking; worse, you start feeling. So just keep moving.

Still, it was a puzzle. How much should he pack? How long would he be gone? Should he pack light, in the hopes that Finn truly just needed a few days of space to do whatever Jedi stuff he needed and then take him back? (Something laughed, dark and cruel in the back of his mind, at the idea that he would be coming back.) Maybe he should pack everything. He wondered at what point he would stop shifting from place to place with the sum total of his worldly possessions in a small bag. He had never been particularly attached to things, but this wasn't the first, second, or even third time that he’d walked away from something close to a home with little more than the clothes on his back.

_ <Now it is confirmed: Master-Finn does not like surprises,> _ BB-8 whistled from the doorway, rolling around the bed.  _ <So next time, we can-> _

“I can’t handle I-told-you-sos right now, BeeBee,” said Poe, stuffing the bag with underwear. It was the one thing he didn’t really share with Finn.

_ <That is not a told-sos! I am trying to help!> _ BB-8 insisted. He whirled around at Poe’s feet, blatting to get his attention.

“Little late for all that, buddy, it’s-” Poe stopped as he heard the door to their quarters slide open and footsteps come into the living room. He slung the bag over his shoulder and lingered in the bedroom doorway, watching Finn juggling the blanket, the tray of food, the bucket of champagne slung over his forearm. “I told you I’d deal with all that.”

“It was the least I could do,” said Finn. His face was sad, and he took quick and guilty glances at Poe as he jumbled the things on the table. “I’m sorry I ruined your surprise.”

“It’s fine,” Poe shrugged. “BeeBee was just telling me how you don’t really like surprises anymore.”

Finn looked down at BB-8, who was lingering behind Poe’s ankles.

“Sorry I screwed this up so bad,” said Poe. Finn looked up to meet his eyes, and Poe had to look down at the floor, though he also had to keep his chin level so that gravity didn’t force out the salty moisture where it was pooling in the corner of his eye.

“You didn’t-”

“Dont,” Poe shook his head. “Please, don’t. This is hard enough.” He hoisted the bag over his shoulder and slowly crossed the living space on the far side from Finn, along the wall, toward the door. “I just thought you liked that stuff.” The romantic stuff.  _ Me _ .

“I did!” Finn insisted. Poe resisted the urge to scoff. “I mean, I used to...but I don’t like feeling, um, naive. And surprises really only meant bad things for a long time, and then when they stopped being bad, they were still usually confusing, or weird, or dangerous, or scary…”

“Sorry,” Poe said again.

“I know you like them, though.”

“Doesn’t matter what I like, if you don’t like it.”

“It’s not really the surprise,” said Finn. “I don’t like when the thing we’re celebrating is a surprise. I don’t like that I didn’t know what an anniversary was.”

“Yeah.” Poe swallowed the lump in his throat. “Well, I know that now.”

“It makes me feel like a child or something,” said Finn, clenching and relaxing one hand in the cradle of the other. “I’m not.”

“No, of course you’re not.” Poe took another slow, careful step toward the door, uncertain if he should linger to see if Finn changed his mind, or leave quickly before he could. The last thing he wanted was to be asked to stay out of guilt, out of pity. He wasn’t sure he could live with being that pathetic; or really, he knew he  _ could _ handle being that pathetic, would  _ absolutely _ get down on his knees in every possible way if it would mean that Finn asked him to stay.

“So you’re really leaving?” Finn was chewing on his lip.

Poe sighed, and closed his eyes. “Finn, I love you more than anyone I’ve ever known. You want me to stay, I'll stay. You want me to go, I'll go.”

“Stop acting like that’s a foregone conclusion,” said Finn, voice suddenly tight. Poe wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Finn vacillate so wildly between his usual calmness and visible anger. (But he didn't ask him to stay.)

“You literally just asked me to leave!”

“I asked to take a break,” said Finn. He looked between Poe’s bag, the floor, the door, BB-8, anything but meeting Poe’s eyes.

“Right. I’m trying to do what you asked,” said Poe. “If you’re only trying to back out now because you feel guilty, that’s not...don’t do that.” He let out a dark laugh. “I’ve been there before, and it’s not good. It just delays the inevitable, only worse.”

They stood in silence, for a little while. Poe half-expected BB-8 to chime in, but aside from a few nervous wibbles, the droid was staying as quiet as he had in the grove.

“When you're here,” Finn started, haltingly, staring at the floor, “All I can think about is how I don't want you to leave. How I'm...I'm scared you're going to-- And then it becomes how I'm sure you're going to leave. And then I can't...like I can't take it, just go already. Then I get angry that you haven't left. And then...and then I do want you to leave.”

“Because you want to get it over with?” Poe asked. “Or because you actually want me to go?”

“...I don't know. Both. Neither,” said Finn.

“Oh.” 

“Sometimes, Jedi Training feels a lot like First Order training,” said Finn. “Being one with the universe isn’t really all that different from being one insignificant chip in a much larger system. And you’re not supposed to feel, except how and when they want you to feel.”

Poe wondered if he should sit down. He didn’t, but he gave himself permission to look at Finn while he listened. 

“And then I come out of the Force, and come here to you, and I have to be one person again,” Finn continued. “And then I’ve got to deal with all the....and I’ve got to know what to do about it. Not part of a movement, or a group, or a greater purpose. Just me. I’m not really good at that.”

“Hey, that’s not-”

“I’m not, Poe,” Finn shook his head. “I don’t know how to do this. This,” and he gestured back and forth between them. “I’ve been faking it. I’ve been winging it. I don’t have the first damn clue about how this works.”

“I thought we were figuring it out together,” said Poe quietly.

“I’m just so tired, Poe.” Finn sagged against the table in the little kitchen, as though it were the only thing keeping him standing. Then he rubbed his forehead. “I keep trying to ignore it, and it won’t go away, and-”

“Yeah,” Poe nodded, taking a step toward him. His entire being wanted to take Finn in his arms, hold him, care for him, but he kept control of himself. The last thing he wanted was to make this worse. “It’s like I said before, this Force stuff isn’t something you can shut off. I’m sorry I made it harder for you.”

Finn sighed and closed his eyes. “I just can’t do this anymore. I need a break.” He slid down the counter to sit on the floor. “I know this is hurting you, and I’m sorry, but-”

Poe stepped back. “I get it, Finn. It’s okay.” He put his hands in his pockets, shifting the weight of the bag on his shoulder. “I’ll be at my dad’s until...I mean, if you need anything.”

Finn kept his eyes on the floor, dead stare, clearly refusing to look up while nervously toying with the ring around his neck. “Do you want me to give this back?”

“No,” said Poe. “It’s for you.” Then he walked out the door, before he lost the last of his dignity and started to cry, or worse, started to beg.

***

An early monsoon had settled over the entire Petéyan region, pelting such a heavy rainfall that Poe had to adjust his controls to compensate for the weight of the water the moment they dipped below the clouds.

Grateful for BB-8’s gentle navigation assistance, since he could barely see a thing in the downpour, they landed the  _ Yavinese Sunset _ in the field behind his father’s house. Poe was soaked the instant the cockpit hatch raised to disembark. BB-8 was already out of the astromech socket and rolling toward the house, pale yellow porchlight barely visible through the thundering sheets of rain. Poe’s hair hung dripping in his eyes, shirt plastered to his skin, as he followed the droid at a full run through the torrents of mud. 

Other than the wan porchlight over the front door, the little house was dark. Poe mentally re-calculated the jump time and the cycle chrono on Yavin, and realized his father was either asleep or out working a night shift. After the third knock, just when he was searching his memory for whether the window in the guest bedroom could still pop out with the right amount of force to the frame, the door opened with a jolt.

“Do you have any idea what time it-- Poe!”

“Hi Pop,” said Poe, water dripping onto his nose.

“What’s going on?” Kes stepped into the porchlight, putting the blaster back on the entry table. He glanced down at BB-8 and then into the dark curtain of rain behind him. “Where’s Finn? Are you all right?”

The concern in the way his eyebrows twisted threatened to wash away the last of Poe’s resolve with the water running through the yard, pouring off the roof into the overflow barrels, and it was only the knowledge that he was absolutely soaking wet that prevented him from throwing himself into his father’s arms in a melodramatic display of heartbreak.

“Poe?” his father repeated.

“Can I stay here for a few days?” Poe blurted out, voice cracking.

“Oh, kid.” Kes’s face fell and that did it, now tears were leaking out of Poe’s eyes. He hoped they could pretend it was the rain. “Of course you can stay, Poe, you can always-- Come on, come in, you’re soaking wet.

Poe took two steps into the house and half-collapsed against his father, planting his face onto his shoulder and dropping the overnight bag at their feet with a dull thud.

“Oh, kiddo,” his father sighed, rubbing his upper back in a way he hadn’t done in decades. “What happened? Please tell me Finn is okay.”

“He’s...” Poe sniffled. “He’s on Kamparas.”

“Kamparas?” Kes blinked at him, and then Poe caught a glimpse of understanding in his eyes. “You got dry clothes?”

“Uh huh,” Poe nodded, rubbing his eyes. He had all of his clothes. Everything, in one bag. One pair of boots, three shirts, one spare pair of pants. “Sorry I got you all wet.”

“Don’t worry about that. Go get changed. Want a beer? Or something stronger?”

“Whatever you got,” said Poe. He pulled off his boots at the door and shuffled into the little guest room. Slung his bag on top of the dresser. Tried not to think about the last time he was here, with Finn, snuggled into the little bed together. Maybe he should sleep on the floor. (Maybe that was a twinge melodramatic, even for him.) 

Given the late hour, he put on a pair of old, faded sleeping pants and a stretched-out undershirt he found at the bottom of one of the dresser drawers. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worn them, or why they were still there, but he didn’t have the heart to pull anything out of his overnight bag and risk letting the smell of Kamparas and Finn into the room. His hair was still dripping in his eyes a little, freshwater mixing with the salt. 

His father had put a topaz-orange bottle of quanya and two glasses on the table, already filled. He waited until Poe had slumped into a chair, then held up a glass and paused for Poe to do the same before downing the shot. They did not speak their toast aloud. The first toast was always, quietly, to Poe’s mother. Poe tried not to immediately put his head down on the table.

“All right,” said Kes, repouring the glasses. “What happened?”

“I screwed up,” said Poe.

_ <Inaccurate!> _

Poe gave a frustrated sigh, refusing to look down at the whirring droid. “Don’t listen to him, he’s-”

_ <You are both so stubborn!> _

“Me? I’m not the one who-”

_ <You did not have to-> _

“He  _ asked _ me to-”

_ <But that was illogical! There is no need to comply with-> _

“Bee, when someone asks you to leave, you do what they goddamn ask or-”

_ <Incorrect application of previous program results! Designation-Muran never asked you to-> _

“I asked him! I begged him! Half a dozen times, and he never did! Aren’t you the one who’s always saying that  _ I _ should have-”

_ <Two entirely different protocols! Different parameters! Master-Finn did not actually want you to-> _

“You probably got to stop calling him that, Bee,” Poe said bitterly.

_ <Incorrect! You-> _

“Whoa, whoa!” Kes finally interjected, reaching one hand down to BB-8’s dome and the other out to Poe. “Everyone calm down. Poe, sit down.” Poe settled back in his chair; he’d hardly realized he was half out of his seat. “Now, tell me what happened. You and Finn have a fight?”

Poe shook his head. “I wouldn't be here if it was just a fight, Pop. I’m not-”

“I know,” said Kes, sliding his hand across the table toward him. “I know, kid. You don’t run away from a fight.” He let the silence stretch a moment, clearly waiting to see if Poe would offer more information, but Poe didn’t know where to start. After a minute or so, “He asked you to leave?”

“Yeah,” said Poe. “I...I screwed up, and he got mad, and we fought. Big fight.” He sighed, and then gave a sad shrug, staring intently at the pale wood peeking through the chips in the paint on the old table. “I didn’t think it was-- you know, break-up big, but then he asked to take a break. And we all know what that means.”

_ <He did not mean for you to  _ _ fly away _ _ , Poe Dameron!> _

“So, what, I just move into the barracks with Eumike and Deonis and bum around the damn Jedi Temple for a week waiting for him to decide whether he still wants me?” Poe snapped.

_ <You told him you would not leave unless he asked you to!> _

“He did!”

_ <Yes, but that is  _ _ not what he meant _ _.> _

“Okay!” Kes interjected again. “Okay. BeeBee-Ate, I appreciate you trying to give me your perspective here, but can we let Poe tell his side first? Can you just listen for a while?”

BB-8 made some grumbling, reluctant beeping.

“I promise, we’ll hear you out after,” said Kes.

BB-8 managed to make a sigh out of binary babbles and rolled to the side of Kes’s chair, away from Poe. Somehow, he managed to look and sound exactly like a being with their hands crossed expectantly.

“Go on, Poe,” said Kes after BB-8 had settled down. “Let’s talk it through.”

Poe took another shot of quanya and began to tell the story. By the time he had reached the end, he’d swallowed two more shots and was somewhat surprised that his father hadn’t tried to stop him, especially since he was now openly crying with his head on the table and one arm wrapped around his face. “Why can’t I just--” he stopped himself, trying to keep short of uncontrolled sobbing, and then gave it up for lost. He kept one hand loosely clasped around the empty glass, the other trading turns wiping his nose and eyes and hiding his face from the shame of crying like a child in front of his father.

“Oh, Poe,” said Kes after a moment. He shifted forward, and Poe felt gentle hands in his hair. That just made him cry harder. “Poe, you know I-”

“Were you still in love with Unaya?” Poe blurted out suddenly.

Kes jolted. “What?”

“When you-- When she--” Poe gulped down air. “I’m so sorry, Papa. I screw up everything. I don’t know how you could do this more than once.” He reached for the bottle with shaky hands, deep sniffles and puffy eyes, and poured himself another shot that he didn’t immediately drink. “Feels like I’m gonna die. I’m sorry.”

Kes still seemed thrown off by the shift in conversation. “What have you got to be sorry about?”

“It’s my fault,” said Poe.

“What is?”

“I’m the reason she left.”

“What!?” said Kes. “Of course you’re not.”

“Pop, I’m 35 years old, I’m not a kid,” said Poe. “You don’t have to protect my feelings. I know I was nothing but trouble for both of you.”

“Poe, that’s-” Kes stammered, eyebrows furrowed. “That’s  _ kids _ . Are you serious? You thought that-- Poebito, you were not the reason.”

Poe gaped at him a little. He couldn’t remember the last time his father had called him that. It had been years, possibly decades. It had shifted to ‘Poe-bee’ soon after L’ulo had left and Poe had insisted he was too old to be ‘ito-anything.’

“Have you really thought that, all this time?” asked Kes, looking incredulous. “Is that why you ran off back then?”

Poe shrugged and looked down at the alcohol, gently sliding the cold glass back and forth across the table between his fingers. “It wasn’t the  _ only _ reason.”

Kes leaned back in his chair and blew out a deep sigh, hollowing his cheeks and looking up at the ceiling. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Shara was the only one who could ever reach you when you got like this.”

“Like what?” Poe frowned.

Kes tapped the table with the edge of his knuckle a few times, clearly thinking something over, and then knocked with his entire fist. “Don’t move.” He got up and walked to his bedroom. Poe heard the sounds of rummaging and sorting, a few small thumps and some minor grumbles. Poe slowly drained the alcohol out of his glass while he waited, pointedly not looking anywhere near BB-8’s expectant and disapproving lens.

His father came back cradling a small wooden box with a hinged lid, and Poe felt his heart twitch. “You kept it.”

“Course I kept it,” said Kes. “Haven’t looked at it in a long time, though. Couldn’t.” He put it down gently and slid it across the table. Then he poured himself another drink. “Never read any of them, I swear. Only the ones she showed me.”

Poe swallowed carefully, wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve, and opened the box.

It was so full of flimsi that the pages immediately cascaded onto the table once they were released from the pressure of the closed lid, expanding and sliding away. There were larger pieces, folded inexpertly, and small scraps. Colorful drawings, backwards and upside down letters, paragraphs of cramped and awkward scrawl. Notes, letters, children’s art from the time he was big enough to hold a wax pencil and attempt to color 'I love you' to the journal-like pleas for her to hear his pain or smile at his jokes long after she was buried.

Poe sifted through the notes for a long time, wiping his eyes every so often.

“Every single one of your teachers told me about the notes you’d leave for them,” said Kes, his voice a little tight. “Unaya still has a few of them, too. ‘Course by then, you were too cool for little love notes, but you’d leave jokes and apologies and embarrassing sentences from those books of hers you used to steal. She told me she always knew when you’d snuck out and got into trouble at night, because you’d put flowers on the table.”

Poe smiled a little.

“Komi showed me some of his, when I was out in Tikalo last month.” Kes reached for one of the little cascading pieces, covered in A-wings and stars and rainbows. “I got a box, too, of course. Mine’s a little smaller.” And he laughed and wiped his eyes, shaking his head at the overflowing box for Shara Bey. “But Poe, you pour all this out, all the time, and then when someone tries to give you back just a fraction, you either bolt or you double-down. You’ve always...I never understood, but your mother did. She was just the same.”

Poe didn’t answer; he was too busy staring intently at a long letter he’d written in his smallest possible handwriting, pouring out anger and confusion and heartache and longing. He remembered writing it, when he was 14. It was one of the last letters he'd written to her. He remembered feeling guilty, too, when he’d stuffed the sadness in the box; like it was too much to put on anyone, especially her, if there was a chance that some part of her spirit might read it. Remembered pulling it out later and covering the page with illustrations of pink villhea flowers to try to lighten the mood. (But he still put it back in the box.)

“You know she turned me down, the first time I asked her to marry me?” Kes smirked.

Poe looked up with a start. “She what?”

“Told me I was crazy,” said Kes. “We were too young, galaxy was about to explode, no time for all that.” He shook his head and laughed. “She was the one who chased  _ me _ ! Most people’re too scared to give their heart out like that. You and your mother, you’re too scared to let someone give you theirs.”

Poe stared at him. His father had never talked about his mother like this before.

“I got used to that, how that went,” Kes continued. “How to sneak around and trick her into letting me love her, she...she always had to feel free, you know? And that was just fine with me. I liked her like that. But Unaya…” and he shook his head. “I loved her. And I didn’t figure out how she wanted me to show her until it was too late. Sure, part of that was being busy, working, kids-- Poe, you weren’t the only kid here. Just because you struggled doesn’t mean Komi and Yex didn’t have their own-- That’s just how kids  _ are _ .” Kes was vehement. “But that’s not an excuse. I just didn’t figure it out in time. It was all me.”

Poe was still staring, hands frozen.

“I’m no good at giving advice,” said Kes. “I’ll be the first to say that I got a lot wrong for you. Hell, I had to have an old war buddy come help me take care of my own kid because I was too-” He stopped himself, and shook his head slightly. “So I don’t know if any of this helps, at all. And you can tell me if I’m getting it wrong. But I know you, and I got a pretty good idea of Finn, and it sounds to me like he doesn’t know what to do with someone who can give their whole heart and soul and still have one foot out the door.”

That jolted Poe out of his stunned statis. “I don’t have my-- Pop, I gave up  _ everything _ for him!”

Kes raised an eyebrow and looked around. “And yet, here you are.”

“He asked me to leave!” Poe protested.

“And I can see that hurts like hell,” said Kes. “And I’m sorry it happened. And I’m not saying this is your fault. It’s not about whose fault it is. It’s about all your past hurt and pain and choices butting up against his past hurt and pain and choices, and sometimes that makes a mess you gotta figure out how to clean up together.”

“I thought we were,” said Poe, sniffling again. “I told him that I thought we were. I would have-- You know I would have-”

“I know, Poe," said Kes. "I know you poured every piece of yourself into loving him, and that’s  _ good _ because that boy  _ needs _ it. But you’re also here crying on my table acting like this was inevitable. Like you were just waiting for this to happen.”

_ <Master-Finn tried to tell you that he-> _

“Not yet, BeeBee-Ate,” said Kes sharply.

The droid again rolled back, making a clicking zipping-up sound. The table was quiet, and Poe contemplated pouring another shot. Surprised that he wasn’t falling-down blackout drunk already, though he certainly felt like he could fall asleep at the table in a pool of his own tears at any moment. 

“I don’t want him to stay with me because he feels too guilty to break it off,” Poe said finally.

Kes furrowed his eyebrows. “Why would that-”

“I have some experience with asking someone to leave, and them not leaving, and then not having the balls to just break up with him,” said Poe, trying and failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “I didn’t want to do that to him.”

Kes was frowning at him.

“Muran’s alive, by the way,” Poe sighed.

The frown darkened significantly. “Boy, I will personally smack you upside the head if you so much as  _ think _ of leaving Finn for that-”

“Oh Force no,” said Poe, and BB-8 immediately began beeping in solidarity. “No, no, no, no. Hell no. Hell fucking no. Wait a second,” he looked up. “I thought you liked Muran?”

Kes gave him a look so dark and protective, Poe thought it should have been accompanied by a very large blaster rifle and a threat to avenge a fictional daughter’s honor.

“He was always on his best behavior around you,” said Poe, feeling strangely defensive, and then angry that he had any residual need to feel defensive about Muran.

“Poe,” his father was very unimpressed, “I don’t know who either of you thought you were fooling, but I’ve known my fair share of two-faced bastards who thought the sun shone out their own ass, and you can’t hide your emotions for shit. But the one time I finally tried to talk to you about it, you-”

“I know,” said Poe, remembering. He stared down at the table, ashamed of himself again. “We had a huge fight, and I didn’t come back until I went AWOL. Fuck, I’m such an idiot.”

Kes sighed. “Poe, that’s not what I…” he trailed off, rubbing his forehead. 

_ <Am I allowed to speak yet?> _

“Sure,” said Kes, gesturing at the droid with the air of someone close to giving up. “Go ahead.”

_ <Summary of errors,> _ the droid began beeping rapidly. _ <Master-Poe wishes to be interconnected with Master-Finn forever and ever. Master-Poe does not wish to execute any system error that would cause disconnection from Master-Finn. Master-Poe over-uses available system energy to ensure redundancy in connection conduits to reduce risk of disconnection, which puts excessive strain on the system. Master-Finn’s interconnector programming is suboptimal due to First Order incompetence; previous patches have not been enough to restore full functionality. System reset may be required. System reset may eliminate the need for connection redundancies, which puts excessive strain on Master-Poe’s base programming. Master-Finn does not wish to put strain on Master-Poe’s base programming. Multiple redundancies are not required for optimal performance. Optimal connective performance provides necessary circuitry patches to repair First Order incompetence. Conclusions: You are both stubborn and stupid. Eliminate inefficiency and secure primary connective drive. Problem solved.> _

The droid made a few tsking sounds, not unlike slapping palms together, and swiveled between Poe, who was staring at him with his jaw half-dropped, and Kes, who was clearly fighting a laugh.

“You’re not wrong, Bee,” said Poe after a moment, looking down at the collection of love letters again. He wasn’t sure he could bear to look at them anymore, and also felt quite certain he wouldn’t sleep again until he’d read through every single one. "But I don't think it's that easy."

_ <Suboptimal performance includes deficiencies in connectivity between central neural processing and feelings-net,> _ said BB-8.

“Feelings-net?” asked Poe.

_ <Master-Finn does not know how to talk about his feelings.> _

“Kriff, does anyone?” Poe sighed. Then he looked at each of them, in turn. “So, what do I do?”

_ <No more surprises,> _ said BB-8.

Poe snorted. “Yeah, Bee, I got that one.”

“Give him a little time, like he asked,” said Kes. “But don’t give up. And don’t let him get away easy. That boy loves you.”

"Does he?" Poe sighed, and then held up his hands before either BB-8 or his father could make good on their clearly-frustrated threats to smack or zap some sense into him. “Okay! Okay, point taken. But this is why the Old Jedi didn’t have relationships, you know,” he couldn't resist adding. “Too many distractions, too much potential pain for the Dark Side to-”

“That’s a load of shit,” said Kes. “Just institutionally sanctioned married-to-the-job crap. Doesn’t matter what job: Senate, Jedi, fighter pilot. Your mom thought I’d change my mind and so she poured her heart into me  _ while at the same time _ keeping a ten-meter-high wall around that place inside. And then got mad when I asked her to marry me.” He laughed suddenly, looking at another one of Poe’s drawings of A-wings and X-wings and exploding Star Destroyers. “I miss her so much.”

“Me too,” said Poe, slowly gathering the notes back into the overflowing box. He shoved his empty glass to the side, crushed the box closed and held it tightly between his hands, and got up from the table. He crouched down to kiss the top of BB-8’s dome, and then straightened up to kiss the top of his father’s head. “Good night.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me five months to realize that we had to go back to Yavin and Kes for this story to work. S-M-R-T!


	3. Chapter 3

Finn usually managed to sleep when he was tired. He wasn’t sure if it was some latent ability to overcome his mental gymnastics when confronted with physical exhaustion, or the decades of Stormtrooper training that required the ability to sleep, despite his mind spinning circles and resisting, to survive. But even in the most anxious and tense of situations, Finn could usually force his body to rest when he got the opportunity.

He barely slept that night.

The bed was cold. The room was disorientingly dark without BB-8’s charging glow. There were too many blankets without Poe wrapping the excess around his feet in the middle of the night. It was eerily quiet without his grumbly snoring or his contented sighs. When Finn was alone, his body defaulted to lying prone on his back, arms at his sides, face to the ceiling, barely moving from the moment his head hit the pillow. He had slept that way for years, even after defecting to the Resistance. He was well-used to sleeping in narrow bunks or cold berths. But apparently, after a year in a soft double-bed with Poe to warm it, he had over-acclimated

He finally stopped tossing and turning, threw the pillow off his head to the foot of the bed, and turned to face the lilac dawn creeping across the dark blue sky. None of this seemed quite real; he had half a thought that the door to the refresher would slide open and Poe would stumble, sleepy and yawning, back into bed to wrap himself around Finn’s chest. But of course that didn’t happen.

Finn got up.

He made a cup of caf.

He sat in the dark living room and stared at the half-melted candle on the low table in front of the sofa as the sunrise slowly brought light into the room, turning the shadows long and then chasing them away entirely. The air still smelled faintly of sulfur and smoke. He had blown out the candle after Poe had walked out the door.

Finn had asked him to do that.

He looked over at the videocomm on the little desk near the kitchen. The lens was dark. He thought about the time difference: Kamparas’s daily cycle versus Yavin IV, how many hours it would have taken the X-wing to fly, how many hyperlanes and jumps. Probably the middle of the night, there. Probably not a good time to comm. He had asked for this, after all.

Finn took another sip of caf, still scalding on his tongue, and then got up to pull on some clean clothes, rumpled from the bottom of his dresser. The dresser was half-empty. Poe had taken most of his clothes. Finn hadn’t noticed that, last night. He took a quick inventory, and saw that Poe had left any article of clothing that Finn regularly borrowed but still technically stowed away on Poe’s side of the dresser. Everything else was gone.

He put on his boots and went down to the lower kitchens, leaving the still-steaming cup of caf on the table in their quarters. He unlocked the closet where Poe had stowed all the blasters and jumbled them out awkwardly into his arms before he remembered he was a goddamn Jedi, took a deep breath, and managed to Force-lift them in a neat and orderly pile, floating behind him like a protective battalion of cover fire. He stashed one blaster back in the largest cauldron, unused since the time of the Old Jedi, and another one behind the gnarled oak tree in the training room. And then another one in the planter box just outside the doorway to their quarters. He used the remaining blasters to shore up the voids where Poe’s belongings once were: the half-empty dresser, under the sofa, behind the videocomm table.

He took another sip of caf, and quickly gulped the rest of it down when he found it was nearly cold now. 

He put on a sweater. Shara Bey’s ring still burned cold against the skin on his chest. It felt like guilt and rapprochement and grief.

He opened the cooler and took out two of Poe’s sandwiches: the salad and the tip-yip.

They were delicious. 

He took off Poe’s mother’s ring, and laid it gently on top of the half-empty dresser. He checked its placement in the exact center of the dresser, far enough to avoid being swept into the gap between the furniture and the wall, or to fall off the edge onto the floor. Then he left the room.

***

It was a short walk to the cave. His mind was blank. There were no colors that morning, only the pale gray clouds and chilly air, with low-lying fog catching in the black branches of the oak trees.

He had to stoop to enter, which didn’t bode well for the later passages. Finn did not like cramped spaces. He did not like being underground, though he could manage if the tunnels were wide enough to stretch out his arms, tall enough that he didn’t feel them closing in overhead. This cave provided neither of those things. It was narrow, and small, and dark, and cold.

Finn turned on a torch and began to walk.

The crystals began to appear early, far earlier than he’d expected. Small pieces of dirty white, forming constellations and frost-pictures in the rock and damp soil. He wondered what was wrong with those crystals. Weren’t they good enough? Maybe their Jedi hadn’t been born, yet. Maybe their Jedi had already lived and died, without knowing that the voice calling in the back of their mind was, in fact, a grubby little piece of white rock in a cave underneath an oak grove. 

Finn kept walking. There were more crystals. He had to walk more carefully now, to avoid stepping on them. Tiny pieces littered the ground, someone else’s path laid down centuries ago and followed by the subsequent crystal-seekers to avoid further destruction. But the crystal shards remained underfoot, glinting in the light of his torch.

The cavern twisted deeper into the hill, gently sloping down, winding around itself. In places, the ceiling lengthened and the tunnel widened, and Finn could catch his breath. But there were narrow places, too: empty rooms of shining white and purple in the blue-tint of his torch, where it took several minutes of hunting to find the little black hole in the wall to squeeze through on his hands and knees, and continue.

The Presence got louder. It wasn’t so much saying anything, not using words or language or color. But it was singing something. Something alien, and familiar, and terrifying, and comforting, all at the same time. Loudly. Unceasingly.

Finn just wanted it to stop.

Finally, after scraping through endless narrow hallways and several cavernous halls, he found it by crouching down at the edge of a small, circular-shaped cave. It was medium-sized, four-sided with a blunted tip, and broke easily off its perch when Finn touched it. The moment he touched it, there was both light and sound, and darkness and shadow. His torch went out, and then relit. The room sparkled with purple and blue, a strange flash of bright pink, shimmering like starlight, and then dimmed again.

Finn held the kyber crystal in his hand for a long time. He rolled it around on his palm with his thumb, rubbing slightly at the smooth glassy surface. It didn’t seem to be cracked anywhere, nor was it spackled with dirt or soil. Gently rubbing over its edges with the pad of his thumb seemed to be enough to dust it, to polish it, to make it shine. His mind felt so blissfully, wonderfully blank.

He held the crystal, and thought some more. They weren't formed thoughts, just drifts of feelings and nostalgia and the faint whisper of memories. The dark and the quiet, deep under the roots of the oak tree that he could feel growing into the soil, searching for water. Then he put the crystal down on the ground, in a flat and even space between the other crystal formations, and lifted his knee, positioning the crystal directly under his boot.

“Why do they always jump straight to destruction?” a wry, raspy voice asked behind him.

Finn whirled around, and then nearly fell over. “Leia,” he whispered.

“I mean, really, Finn,” said the blue-glowing form of Leia Organa, gesturing around at the thousands of other crystals in the cave around them. “Are you sure you're thinking this through?”

Finn put his boot down carefully, just next to the kyber crystal. “This is the one that won’t leave me alone.”

“So you squish it?” she raised an eyebrow. "Not that you  _ could _ , those things generate lasers that can  _ cut through anything… _ " She shook her head. Her hair, still visibly gray even as it shone Force-blue, was swept up in its usual series of folds and twists. She settled down carefully on a large, smooth rock devoid of crystal formations in the center of the cave. “Men,” she muttered as she adjusted her robes.

“How did you do it?” Finn asked, taking a hungry step toward her and all but falling down at her feet. “How did you just walk away? It won’t shut up, it won’t leave me alone, and I don’t want this and it doesn’t care, it just keeps-”

“Well, I don’t exactly recommend my path,” said Leia. “The Force has not been kind to my family.”

Finn nodded understanding. “It’s been pretty unfair, if you ask me. None of you signed up for what you got.”  _ Not even Ben Solo _ , he had to admit, though he couldn’t even say so aloud to Rey. There was still too much residual resentment for him to let go even a fraction of Ben’s years of support of the First Order. 

“Does anyone?” Leia shrugged. “There’s just not a lot of fairness in this galaxy. A lot of what’s happened to you isn’t fair. Almost none of it.”

“No,” said Finn, drawing his knees up to his chest and pressing them tight.

“You know, Finn, it broke my heart to meet you,” said Leia.

Finn furrowed his eyebrows. “Me?”

“I looked at you, and I saw the way Poe looked at you, and I thought, sweet stars, they’re just babies,” said Leia. She looked into the darkness of the far side of the cave, shadowed even from the Force’s glow. “All those babies, locked away. And I’ve been shooting at them. Shooting at them for years. I should have realized. I should have  _ known. _ ”

“No one knew,” said Finn, fighting a small lump in his throat. “You couldn’t have known. No one else did.”

“I should have looked closer, Finn. I owe you an apology,” said Leia.

“You never have to apologize to me!” said Finn, aghast at the idea.

Leia looked sad again. “Finn, the entire galaxy owes you an apology. I should have--” and she laughed, cynical and tired, “If I had used the Force. If I hadn’t blocked it out, shut it off, sent it to its room and locked the door because it was too painful and too frightening, I might have been able to see it sooner.”

Finn wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he settled his chin on his knees.

“You look like you could use a hug,” said Leia.

Finn muffled a laugh. “I could. I really could.”

“I’d offer, but you’d just fall through,” she said.

He smiled up at her, and then it faltered. “I miss you. I mean, I know we didn’t really...Rey misses you something awful, of course, and Poe...Poe’s still heartbroken that you’re gone.”

“Heartbroken” Leia mused. “Yes, he is.”

“I know,” said Finn, guilt churning in his stomach.

“I’m not here to admonish you, Finn,” said Leia. “I mean, except about the boot thing, that’s just stupid.”

“Yes, sir,” said Finn.

“But I know you’re struggling,” she said. “I know it’s hard.”

“I can do hard,” said Finn. “I’ve been doing it my whole life. I’ve always done it.”

“Yes, you have,” said Leia with a gentle nod. “But here’s the thing: Everything breaks, eventually.”

Finn looked up at her, confused and surprised.

“Everyone breaks,” she continued. “Everything breaks. The Force, the Light, the Dark, the crystal, none of it goes away. Even if you didn’t have the Force, it wouldn’t stop it from happening. Everything, everyone, everything breaks eventually.”

Finn wasn’t sure how to process the bleakness of such a statement, especially from the woman who had been a beacon of hope for him and his friends for years, for decades of her life, forever a fighter, forever the spark of hope. If the Leia that became one with the Force was this nihilistic, what was the point of-

“What matters,” said Leia, “is what you build from the pieces.”

“Oh,” said Finn. He looked down at the crystal in the palm of his hand ( _ when had that happened? _ ) and thought. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“Yes, you do. You need to search your feelings,” said Leia. “That’s the worst, you know. Much easier to break something or fire a blaster or blow something up. Or focus on someone else's feelings, make someone else's path and pain more important. It’s not easy to be the one who’s always putting things back together. I know, it’s a thankless task. I’m sorry I passed it on to you.”

“You held everything together, for so long,” said Finn.

“I had help,” said Leia. “I wasn’t alone. You’re not alone.”

“Why does it feel like I can never choose what happens to me?” said Finn. “Is the Force guiding all of it? Because, yeah, the Force has sent me some fucked-up shit to handle.”

“It has,” Leia nodded. “But you did choose, Finn. You chose a long time ago, on Jakku.”

“That wasn’t really a choice,” said Finn. “More like self-preservation.”

“It was the right thing to do,” she said, and did she know how she echoed his own life? Could she see all that, through the Force? “You’ve made a lot of choices, and every single one was the right thing to do. You have excellent instincts for that.”

“Not  _ every _ single one,” said Finn.

“The ones that count.”

“I just broke my boyfriend’s heart because I couldn’t make the right choice,” said Finn. “I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. I just know that this is too much, and I don’t want to do the wrong thing, and-”

“Calm down,” said Leia. “Poe’s not that breakable. Believe me, he’s tried. And I’ve tried. And the First Order definitely tried.”

Finn gave her a small smile.

“He’s not as fragile as you think he is.” Leia patted his knee, which was the strangest sensation of cold and lilac-purple. “But it’s not about him. What do you want, Finn? Deep down? Not what you think you should do, not what you’re worried he’ll do, or what you’re worried you won’t do. What do  _ you _ want? Because the universe owes you a favor, and I’ve got a few credits to cash in myself, and I think you deserve something you want.”

Finn rubbed his cheek on the top of his knees, suddenly shy. “You’d do that for me?”

“Nothing can make up for what they did to you, Finn, and what we failed to see,” said Leia. “But you can’t give up. Keeping everything together is hard, and thankless, and exhausting, but if you can’t have hope that it’ll get better and something will work out, then what are any of us doing anyway?”

There was the Leia he knew. Force, he had missed her. “I miss him already,” said Finn. “Is that pathetic?”

“No,” said Leia.

“Am I just dependent?” Finn asked, thinking aloud. “Like, I can’t be on my own? I need to have Phasma, or Rey, or you, or  _ someone _ telling me how to feel and what to do-”

“You were alone for many years,” said Leia. “You could have set out on your own many, many times before now.”

There was a long, dark silence in the cave.

“You’re not supposed to want both,” Finn said finally, just barely louder than a whisper. “Rey can live for this, and Poe can live for me, and I just…”

“You want both,” said Leia.

Finn nodded slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

“So did I,” said Leia. 

“But your vision,” said Finn. “Your vision said you couldn’t have it. So what should I-- I mean, am I supposed to be…? Do I need to...?”

Leia sighed heavily, as though she were trying to keep the bitterness at bay. “Visions, prophesies, oaths, vows. Listen, Finn, I’m old and I’m dead, and I don’t think anyone’s ever had a damn clue what the Force is really trying to tell us. It’s all filtered through our own fears and hopes and wishes. But if I know one truth about the universe, it’s that choices made out of fear rarely work out the way you hope they will. When you make choices out of love, it’s much easier to accept whatever comes of it. Even if it doesn’t work out. It’s the difference between running away and running toward, and they could look exactly the same on the outside except for how they feel on the inside.”

Finn thought that over. Thought about leaving Rey in Maz’s cantina to escape to the Outer Rim, and then running into the heart of a snowstorm to find her again. Thought about seeing the distant smoke rising over the sand dunes from kilometers away, and moving deeper into the desert toward the wreckage of a First Order starship, despite the fact that it was certainly transmitting its location, to see if the man he’d known for less than an hour needed help. Thought about taking a skimmer over the open ocean, running across the D’Qar tarmac, and pointing a rusting, rickety speeder directly into the path of a cannon blast.

He looked down at the crystal in his hand, and saw the slightest ripple of lilac and fuchsia. “Thank you, Leia.”

“Thank you, Finn,” said Leia, and she smiled down at him. “Thank you for taking care of them for me.”

“Rey’s okay,” said Finn. “Not great, but okay.”

“So my brother tells me,” she said with a concerned sigh. 

“Do you want me to pass anything on to Poe?” he asked. He wasn’t sure why he did, but he knew it would mean a lot to Poe to receive a message from Leia.

“Tell him…” Leia started, and then glanced up at the ceiling, distracted in thought. “Tell him that she read them all.”

Finn blinked, not entirely following, but he nodded. “Okay. I will.”

“Thank you. Oh, and Finn?” said Leia, already starting to fade. “She says she’s glad you have it.”

And then Finn was left alone in the dark.


	4. Chapter 4

It was midday, and hot, and humid, and Poe was bathed in sweat indistinguishable from the rain. The thick clouds of the monsoon had not cleared overnight; they lingered to reabsorb the moisture they’d already spent, a sticky loop of mud and wet leaves and scattered showers and air so thick he could choke on it. So of course, Poe was trying to tune out the rattling in the air filtration system along with some long-overdue cleaning and maintenance. “Can’t let it get moldy,” he had told his father after a fitful night of barely-sleeping, “You’ll get respiratory problems.” 

His father had known better than to protest, and so Poe was up on a ladder outside the kitchen window, his bag of tools tucked under the eaves, tightening bolts and cleaning muck out of the mesh as the mist steadily collected on the fine hairs at the back of his neck. 

“Poe!” his father called from the front of the house. “Hey, Poe-bee!”

“Yeah?” Poe leaned back on his heels, holding tight to the slippery gutters to brace the ladder as it sunk deeper into the mud. “What’s up?”

“Get in here, you got a comm!”

“What?”

“Hurry up!”

Poe chewed on his lower lip as his heart swam around in his stomach, hurriedly stowing the tools in the bag and tucking the ladder further under the eaves of the house. He brushed wet hair out of his eyes, trying to push it back off his forehead (it was nearly long enough to tie, he needed to cut it soon, he’d never had it so long), as he walked swiftly into the house. 

Finn was glowing faintly in the videocomm screen on the table, his expression implacable but not stony. The room was empty; his father’s bedroom door was pointedly closed, and BB-8 was nowhere to be seen.

Poe took a deep breath, wiped his hands on his already-disgusting shirt, covered in mud and sweat, and settled down into the chair. “Hi!” he forced himself to smile. "Didn’t expect to hear from you today!” 

“Hi,” said Finn.

“How are you?” Poe asked, trying to sound friendly and eager, but not too desperate. “How’s Rey? Did-”

“Come home,” Finn interrupted.

Poe closed his mouth as his stomach did another backflip.

“Please?” asked Finn, and finally there was a hint of worry in his eyes. “I miss you, so much. Please come home.”

“I--” Poe started, and then paused a moment for thought. “Look, Finn, I miss you too. And I’d love to come home. But...but are you sure you’ve had enough time?”

“There’s a lot we need to talk about, but I want to do it here,” said Finn. “Please, will you come?”

“Yeah,” said Poe, trying to keep calm. “Of course.”

“Now?” asked Finn. “Today?”

Poe chuckled a little. “Okay. If you’re sure…?”

“Very sure,” said Finn. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

"I mean it. I'm really, really sorry."

"Me too, buddy."

“So I really want to keep doing this for an hour," said Finn, "But I’m going to go because I want you to get in your ship right now."

Poe laughed. “Okay.”

“Right now, Poe,” said Finn seriously.

“Okay,” said Poe, trying to keep himself from smiling too wide. “See you soon.”

Finn hesitated. “...I mean, I’m not trying to order you or anything. If you’re mad, or I hurt you too bad to just...I’m not trying to snap you around, I understand if you-”

“I love you,” said Poe.

“You’ll come back?” Finn brightened.

“Already on my way out the door,” said Poe.

Finn glanced behind Poe’s shoulder, searching what he could see of the room. In a quiet voice, “Is your dad mad at me? I couldn’t tell, earlier.”

“Of course he’s not, Finn,” said Poe. “Want to know what he told me?”

“What did he tell you?”

“I’ll tell you when I get home,” said Poe. He smiled, and Finn smiled back.

“Go,” said Finn. “Right now.”

“Okay,” Poe nodded. “I mean, I gotta finish putting the air filtration system back together first, and then trust me, I am going to need a shower, and-”

Finn interrupted him with a loud, long-suffering groan and a roll of his eyes.

“But after that, I’m outta here,” Poe promised.

“Okay,” said Finn.

“Okay.”

***

It was long after dusk by the time Poe landed the  _ Sunset _ back into its slot next to the  _ Falcon _ . He hadn’t procrastinated, not exactly, but the air filtration system took longer to repair than he’d anticipated, and then it felt rude to leave before dinner after blowing more unexpected chaos into his father’s life. He found himself returning to his old mantra ( _ Just see what happens, we’ll just see what happens _ ) to keep himself from short-circuiting with anxiety on the hyperspace trip back to Kamparas. He did allow himself one consoling conclusion: Finn wouldn’t have brought him all the way back here just to finish the break up. 

Once they landed, BB-8 rolled ahead of him as always, and so he was first to receive Finn’s greeting when he stumbled out of the enormous wooden doors at the front of the Temple. He looked a little breathless, like he had run down three flights of stairs. Poe slowed his pace as he approached, shifting the bag over his shoulder and forcing himself not to wring his hands, not to run but not to stop, still feeling exceedingly uncertain and nervous about how this was going to go.

Finn had crouched down next to BB-8 and was whispering frantically at him, glancing up at Poe every so often with a small smile. 

BB-8 beeped some sort of confirmation, and rolled inside the Temple. Finn straightened up and fiddled with his hands: first twisting them together, then starting to slide them into his pockets before changing course to scratch the back of his neck.

“Hi,” said Poe. 

“Hi,” said Finn.

They stood awkwardly for a moment, looking at each other, then looking at the ground, both sliding their hands into their pockets. Finn finally opened his mouth to speak, and Poe’s nervousness shot ahead of him. “Can we skip this weird awkward part and go straight to the hugging part?”

Finn laughed a little, clearly relieved, and nodded as he stepped closer to pull Poe into a long, close, warm, tight embrace. “Thanks for coming back.”

“S’not that easy to get rid of me,” said Poe.

“Good,” said Finn. “That’s good.”

“I mean, I gave you a really easy out, and you didn’t take it, so that’s on you, buddy.”

Finn chuckled a little more, though he quickly sobered again and turned to lead Poe into the Temple with their hands clasped together. “Come on, let’s go talk.”

“Right,” Poe nodded, sinking back into nervousness and trying not to grip Finn’s fingers too tightly. He followed a half-pace behind Finn as they wound through the empty corridors and up the stairs, the stone smooth and well-worn by centuries of footsteps, until Finn paused at one of the reading nooks in the corner, half-hidden by dark purple ferns and feathery green bushes with flipper-shaped leaves, just down the hall from their quarters.

“Can we sit here a minute?” Finn asked, already sliding onto the bench.

“Sure,” said Poe, dropping the overnight bag at his feet and shoving it under the bench. He was a little apprehensive at the idea of having a potentially soul-baring conversation in the hallway, but it was quiet and peaceful, and he didn’t hear the voices of any other Temple inhabitants.

Finn’s left leg was jiggling slightly, his hands clasped in front of himself, elbows resting on his knees. “We already said sorry and stuff, so I think we can just...you know, jump into it?”

“Sure,” said Poe. 

Finn took a deep breath. “Okay. So I should have told you how I was feeling a long time ago.”

“A long time?” Poe frowned. “You’ve been feeling like this for a long time?”

He nodded, still looking at the floor. “Yeah. I think I have a hard time seeing stuff that’s wrong if it’s not an immediate threat. If it’s not about to kill me or kill you, I just...you know, I’ve always had to keep pushing through it and figure it out.”

“I know what you mean,” said Poe. “I mean, obviously I didn’t know you were struggling with that lately or we wouldn’t be here, but I know what that’s like.”

“Well, yeah, that’s kind of my point,” said Finn. “You’ve been there, you’d get it. But how would you know that’s what’s going on unless I told you?”

“I should maybe have left more space for it,” said Poe. “You were right, too. I’ve been pretty focused on…” and then he laughed, shaking his head. “BeeBee called it ‘over-using available system energy.’ I just didn’t want to do anything to ruin this. I didn’t realize I was putting so much pressure on you.”

“When I sat down and thought about it, it was kind of a stupid fight,” said Finn, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye with a small smile. “Like, you did too many nice things! I feel bad that I didn’t do more nice things! That’s...pretty dumb.”

“Hey, but I never want you to feel like-- like I only want you for sex,” said Poe. “Or that I’m ambushing you with stuff, or that I like that you need me to explain something. I don’t want to be that guy.”

“I know,” Finn nodded. “I know you love me.”

“I really do,” said Poe. And then, in his slyest voice, “Though for the record, I would be completely, 100 percent okay with being solely used for sex. By you.”

Finn rolled his eyes, chuckling a little. “Yeah, that’s not surprising.”

“Because I like having sex with you.”

“Okay, Poe.”

“A lot. A LOT a lot.”

“I get it.” Finn smiled at him.

“I’m just saying, I’ll play your sex slave anytime you-”

“Poe.” 

Poe risked a smile. “But that’s not why I love you.”

“I know,” Finn said again. He reached out to take Poe’s gently in between the palms of his hands, warm and dry and safe. “And I don’t love you because you plan surprises for me, or share your life.”

“I just like spoiling you,” said Poe, sliding closer to press their hips together.

“No one’s ever done that before,” said Finn. “Guess I’m not really good at being spoiled.”

“Eh, we’ll practice,” said Poe. Then, shifting again to link their fingers together, “So you’ll let me stay?” He bumped his shoulder, playfully. “We figure it out together?”

Finn didn’t answer, but he was hiding a smile. He looked down at their intertwined fingers and then stood up, again pulling Poe by the hand down the hallway to the doorway to their quarters. “Hang on,” he said, face unreadable. He dropped Poe’s hand, keyed open the door, and leaned around the doorway in such a way that it completely blocked Poe’s view of the entry room. Poe heard him exchange a quick, low series of words and beeps with BB-8, who was whistling just inside the doorway, and then Finn straightened up again.

“What’s going on?” Poe asked nervously.

“Oh, I just forgot. I have to do something,” said Finn. Then he smiled; a true, wide, somewhat menacing grin, and he leaned closer to kiss him gently on the mouth. “Give me fifteen minutes. BeeBee-Ate will let you know when you can come in.”

And the door swung closed and locked, leaving Poe alone in the empty hallway. 

Poe stood staring at the door to their quarters for a few minutes, trying to sort through what had just happened. He wandered back to the end of the hall to retrieve his bag, but quickly decided he didn’t want to stand there holding it indefinitely, so he put it down just outside the door. Then he pressed his ear against the dark wood, holding his breath and listening hard. He vaguely heard a few beeps, but nothing useful.

Then he started to pace. As the time stretched, the nervousness began to fade away and small amounts of excitement began to build, along with an increasingly skyrocketing amout of desperate curiosity to know what Finn was up to in there. “Finn?” he tried, rapping lightly with his knuckles.

Finn’s voice carried through the door. “Not yet!” He heard some faint murmuring now, and more indecipherable beeping from BB-8, before Finn called again, “Okay, wait ten seconds, and then you can come in. But BeeBee’ll zap you if you come in before that!”

< _ Affirmative, _ > the droid confirmed from the other side of the door.

“My own droid,” said Poe with mock-dramatics, but now he was grinning in earnest. “One...two…”

< _ It is not necessary to count. _ >

“Four...five…”

< _ I am capable of calculating dozens of interstellar hyperspace jumps at once, this is extremely boring _ .>

“Nine...ten! Ready or not, here I come!” Poe hollered. He waited an extra few seconds for BB-8 to protest or warn him away, but the other side of the door was quiet, so he cracked it open and slipped inside.

It was very dark. There was a half-melted, lit candle on the little table just inside the door with a folded piece of flimsi. As Poe picked it up, he recognized the little villhea drawing he’d made for Finn’s anniversary surprise.

~~_ You make me feel like flying, even when I’m on the ground. _ ~~

_ You have a cute butt. _

Poe laughed out loud. “Oh really?” he called out to the empty room.

“You know you’re cute, Dameron,” came the answering call, clearly from the bedroom.

Poe grinned, pocketing the note, and quickly made his way to the candle on the kitchen counter, where his next note was waiting. 

~~_ When I think about you, I see stars (and I think about you all the time). _ ~~

_ Sometimes, I laugh at your jokes because I like how you laugh at them, not because they’re funny. _

_ Oh man _ , thought Poe. “My jokes are great!”

“They’re really not,” Finn called from the other room. 

Poe could see the flickering candlelight in the bedroom from this side of the living room, but he stopped to read the final note on the coffee table:

_ Every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day, I love you _ .

Finn had drawn a little circle around Poe’s previous scrawl and then below it had added:

_ Every week, every month, every year, every place, every time, as long as it takes, as long as you’ll let me, always, forever. _

_ Well, damn it _ , Poe thought again, biting on the inside of his cheek to keep the wetness out of his eyes. “I don’t have anything snarky for this one,” he said.

“Good, so get in here.”

That made him laugh again, and he set the note back down and crossed into the bedroom. As soon as he rounded through the doorway, he started laughing harder. “Well hi there, handsome.”

“Happy Finn and Poe Day,” said Finn, sitting cross-legged on the floor wearing only a pair of black undershorts, Poe’s brown leather jacket, and the chain with his mother’s ring. He had a bottle of beer in each hand, condensation dripping down the sides, with one already outstretched toward Poe. The turquoise and yellow Yavinese blanket was spread out on the floor between the bed and the doors to the balcony, with a vase of white multi-petaled wildflowers and branches of iridescent seed pods shining like seashells, and a small plate full of glossy chocolates. The room was full of candles. And he was grinning with a kind of uncontained glee that Poe had never seen before.

“Finn and Poe Day?” Poe repeated. His cheeks were hurting a little from smiling, and the corners of his eyes were still wet.

“I made it up,” said Finn. “It’s the day we celebrate you and me, and it happens whenever I want and as often as I want.”

“I like it,” said Poe, reaching for the beer, but Finn withdrew it pointedly. 

“Not yet. You’re overdressed for this party,” said Finn, staring down at his clothes.

Poe snorted, but he quickly stripped off his shirt, his boots, and his trousers. “Shorts, too?”

“Up to you. I’m not planning on taking the jacket off,” said Finn.

“Good. I like it when you keep the jacket on,” said Poe, leaving his shorts on and sinking to his knees on the blanket. He leaned in to kiss Finn deeply, tasting a bit of bitterness from the beer on his tongue. Carefully, trying not to upset the chocolates and the bottles and the flowers, he settled himself in Finn’s lap, tucking his hands under the jacket to press against the warmth of his skin. More kisses. “This is nice. You’re nice.”

“Got you a present, too,” said Finn, eyes still closed.

“Is it sex?” Poe couldn’t stop himself from asking as he pressed another light kiss to the soft place just under his ear.

“Yeah, but that’s later.” Finn kissed him again, then leaned back and tilted his head to beam at him again. He was clearly proud of this surprise. “Pocket.”

Poe frowned a little, confused by this development, but obediently drew back to reach into the left pocket of his jacket. He drew out a small, shining piece of glass. “What’s this?”

“It’s a kyber crystal,” said Finn. “It’s what you use to make a lightsaber.”

“Oh,” said Poe, settling back onto his heels and turning it over in his hands. It was warm to the touch, and while the core of the crystal was white, it shimmered with the promise of other colors as he turned it over in his hand. “Is this what you had to do? The Jedi stuff?”

“Uh-huh,” Finn nodded, growing a little serious again. “Well, part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“Actually building it. And before that happens, I’m supposed to meditate with the thing for a long time,” said Finn. 

Poe worried at his lower lip while he considered that, still examining the crystal. “And then you’re officially a Jedi?”

Finn shrugged. “There’s not really anything official about any of this. Not anymore. The Old Jedi had a lot of rules and procedures, but the more I learn about them, the more I think they’re kind of stupid and I don’t really want to do what they did. And Rey’s not going to make me.”

“Did you already do the meditating? While I was gone?”

“Not yet,” Finn shook his head.

“So wait. Are you...giving this to me?” asked Poe hesitantly.

Nope,” said Finn, shifting on his sit bones. “Your present was actually in the other pocket.”

“Oh.” Smiling again, trying to stay playful, he dropped the crystal back in the pocket and made a show of running his hands over Finn’s chest, pretending to check the inside of the jacket for a different pocket, drifting fingertips down his sides, until he finally slipped into the right pocket of the old brown leather. He pulled out a small, square-shaped, black box and stared at it, now truly stunned and silent.

“I bought it a month ago,” said Finn. “On Corellia, when we went to pick up the upgrade for the hyperdrive on the  _ Sunset _ . You were in the repair shop. I still have the receipt, if you don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” Poe said softly. “But I don’t get it.”

“This stupid thing started singing as soon as we got back,” said Finn, jerking his head down at the other pocket with the kyber crystal. “And it wouldn’t shut up. All day, all night, it was...like it was calling me. So I had this,” and he nodded at the box, still closed in Poe’s hand, “And then there was this other thing. It was really, really confusing.”

Poe nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Confusing, and exhausting, and I just did not know how to handle it,” said Finn. “Because I never wanted this, right? Only, now that I’m doing it, I...I do. I do want it. It’s like there’s a part of me that was always supposed to be there, only squished down really deep, and now it’s-- it’s power, but it’s nothing like what I thought it would be. I don’t feel like I want to go take over the galaxy, you know?” He smiled a little, partially sad but with a bit of pride, too.

“Were you worried that you would?” Poe tilted his head. 

“Yeah, I guess? But more like I thought maybe I wasn’t supposed to...like it didn't belong to me. It was Rey, or Leia, or someone special, or someone important, but I couldn’t really…” Finn kept trailing off, and he shook his head, seemingly a bit frustrated that he couldn’t find the right words. “It was just really confusing.”

“You're special," Poe said quietly, trying and failing not to look down at the box in his hands.

Finn smiled a little. “Open it.”

Poe did. It was, of course, a ring. Dark silver, carefully buffed and shining, with a raised band of durasteel that folded back on itself, smooth loops braiding around little grains of burnt black char. Woven through the center was a tiny thread of yellow wire casing, knotted and notched. 

“It’s from a T-65,” said Finn. “There was a street vendor selling jewelry made out of old ship parts. They had a yellow one and an orange one, and you probably would have picked orange, and I thought about it for a while, but yellow is the color you make when you’re happy, and I want you to be...so, um, do you like it?” He fidgeted a little.

Poe swallowed carefully, not daring himself to make assumptions. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, it’s beautiful.”

“Good,” Finn nodded, and then took a deep breath. “Marry me.”

Poe stared up at him, frozen, holding the little box tightly in his fingertips. “What?”

< _ It is supposed to be a question _ ,> BB-8 whistled from the doorway.

“Oh right,” said Finn, blushing now. “Um. Marry me? No, wait. Poe, will you marry me?”

< _ You’re supposed to kneel _ .>

“Damn it,” said Finn, getting flustered now. It took a few seconds to put the beer bottles down properly and guide Poe off of his lap, and then he shifted up to kneel, both knees on the ground. “Like this?” he looked at the droid for confirmation, and then adjusted one leg up. “Or like this?”

< _ Like that. _ >

“This one?”

< _ No, the other one. _ >

“Oh, this one? Okay. Okay, I can do this.” Finn looked back at Poe, who still felt frozen. Like he might explode. Like he might spontaneously combust. “So, the first thing is that, I know you’re going to worry I’m only doing this because of the whole take-a-break thing. And that’s not-- I told you, I already bought it.”

Poe nodded, not entirely trusting himself to speak.

“And I know you technically already asked me, but that was last year and you said it wasn’t for real,” Finn continued. “So I wasn’t sure how it was supposed to go, you know, to be real. Rey didn’t know. Like, was I supposed to just ask after dinner sometime? Or on your birthday? But you’d already had your birthday, before I saw this, so I didn’t...and when you said anniversary, I should have just...I mean, if I were smart, I would have just pretended this was my plan, you know?”

“You don’t like pretending,” said Poe.

“Yeah,” Finn nodded. “Yeah, I don’t, really. And then this damn crystal just would not shut up. So like, I thought maybe I missed my chance? And then I didn’t know what to do. It was just so annoying, man.” And he shook his head, as though he was trying to drown out the sound of the crystal or the uncertainty or the weight of a galaxy full of prophecy, or all of it together, which wobbled him slightly on one balanced knee.

“We can sit down if you-- I mean, you don’t have to do this whole thing like that,” Poe stammered.

“Okay, yeah,” said Finn. His forehead was a little dewy, and he sunk down onto the blanket with a relieved sigh, his legs twisted together. “Yeah, I guess we should probably still...I know you don’t like talking about this part. About bad stuff, or hard stuff, or-”

“I never meant for you to think you couldn’t talk to me about your problems, Finn,” said Poe. “I’m sorry, I never-”

“I really do think that you’re sure I’m going to leave you though, sometimes,” Finn interrupted him. “And that just makes me really...really sad. And so then I thought, maybe that’s what’s inevitable? That I’ll make you leave, or you’ll make me leave, and that’s what’s supposed to happen because I’m supposed to be a Jedi? But Poe, yesterday sucked. It was really awful. I hated it.”

Poe couldn’t suppress the dry chuckle in his throat. “Yeah, babe. It was rough.”

“I don’t want to lose this,” said Finn. “I want to be like this. I know I scared you, with that thing with the break, and I’m really sorry I got so mad and I’m really sorry I hurt you.”

“Finn-”

“But it just proved that I really, really don’t want you to be gone, ever,” Finn barreled ahead. “I love you, and I want...I think we should get married.” He nodded, as though it were a strategic plan. “Yeah. So, what do you think?”

Poe opened his mouth to respond, but Finn interrupted again.

“And don’t ask me if I’m sure,” he said. “I’m sure. You’re the one I want. And I’m not just asking because I want you to stop being afraid that I’ll leave, that’s not the point, I’m just saying that to explain why I-- you know, what’s been going in my head. Since I wasn’t, before.” And then, when Poe once again tried to open his mouth, he continued yet again, “And I know you don’t just want me for sex. I don’t know why I said that. I mean, okay, I guess I feel like that sometimes, but that’s just me worrying that I’m not-”

“Finn,” Poe finally cut in.

“Yeah?”

“Am I allowed to answer yet?”

“Oh.” Finn swallowed carefully, and nodded. “Yeah. Should I...should I ask again? You know, so it’s…” And he gestured back and forth between them, his forehead shining with sweat and nervousness. 

“If you want to,” said Poe.

“Okay. Um, okay.” He awkwardly climbed back onto one bended knee, and took a deep breath. “Poe, will you marry me?”

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “Yeah, Finn. I’d like that.” 

Finn’s face lit up. “Really?”

“Are you kidding?” Poe smiled. “A hundred thousand times, for sure.” And then he crashed forward, crushing his face into Finn’s shoulder, into the old worn leather of that jacket, cradling the box in the palm of his hand.

Finn wrapped his arms around Poe’s back, breathing deeply into his hair. “Good.”

“I don’t think this talk included enough apologies from me, though,” said Poe. “I’m really sorry for everything I did wrong, I-”

“Poe, how would you know any of this unless I told you?”

“But you were right, I should have asked about the anniversary, but Finn, I swear, I wasn’t trying to make you feel dumb,” Poe rambled out as quickly as possible, face still pressed tight against him.

“I know.”

“And then I threw myself a pity party instead of just-- I mean, maybe you didn’t want me to leave and then I did, and what kind of a jerk just up and leaves when you-”

“It’s okay, Poe. I know why you did.”

Poe sighed, feeling the tension and anxiety and sadness and fear from the last few days slowly trickle away. “Are you sure, though?” He couldn’t help it.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

Poe did. He kissed him again, and again, and again. “You’re really sure? I don’t want to-”

“Poe,” Finn pressed their foreheads together, eyes closed. “I’m really, really bad at this."

"You're really not, though."

"And I can’t promise I’m going to get better at it," Finn continued as though he hadn't heard. "But I know how you feel about promises.”

Poe tensed in his lap.

“I know,” Finn repeated, pulling him tighter into his arms. “I think your mom probably promised she wouldn’t leave again, right? She and your dad came back to Yavin, and she promised you she'd never leave again, and then she did. Right?”

Poe was very quiet, for a little while. “I know she didn’t do it on purpose,” he said finally, nose buried in Finn’s neck.

“I know. But she still promised, and you were a little kid, and promises are really important to you,” said Finn. “So I know what I’m risking when I say this, and I can’t promise you much because you’re right, we can’t really control a lot. Just because we want something to go a certain way, doesn’t mean that it...but I promise, Poe, I will never send you away like that again. It's you and me.”

Poe's mouth outstripped his brain again. "What if someone's blackmailing you, and you have to do the hurt me to save me kind of thing?"

"Well, then you'll know it's a trick. I'll even make it super dramatic, just to be sure you get it," said Finn. "Besides, who would blackmail me? And for what?"

Poe ignored the question. "What if some old Jedi Master comes in and says, no married Jedi?"

"Um, I’ll have a lightsaber?" Finn answered. "Or we just run away? Why do I care what some old Jedi thinks?"

"What if I'm kidnapped and Rey's kidnapped and you can only save one of us but there's a better chance I could get away but it's not a sure thing so you-"

"Do we need to get you a writing desk? Because maybe you should write some of these down, man, sell a book. Get out of your head," said Finn, rubbing his hand across Poe's upper back.

"What if you change your mind," Poe said, not as a question, staring at the floor at the edge of the blanket.

"That's what the vows are for," said Finn, "As I understand it."

"People break vows all the time."

"Not me."

"I've broken a couple of oaths, but no vows. I think," said Poe.

"Well okay then," said Finn. "Do you need me to ask again?"

"No. I'll marry you,” said Poe, pressing himself as close as humanly possible. “I meant it, I would have married you a year ago. Two years ago. Probably would have married you in the medbay on D'Qar."

"I think both people have to be conscious for it to be legally binding."

"I love you."

"I know."

“Can we get married on Yavin? Or did you want to do it here?”

“Under the tree,” said Finn. He gently extracted Poe’s arms from around his chest, forcing him to sit back, and took the little box out of his hand. Poe watched him carefully slide the silver ring onto his finger. Then he kissed the back of his hand. “I thought it could be under the tree.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s all, folks! I promise these two will well-and-truly live happily ever after now, never to be tortured by me again. Thank you all so much for reading, I'm so very grateful for the support and encouragement you've given me.
> 
> ETA: I spoke too soon for Fin, as there have been requests for a few more scenes! No idea when I will get to them, but I will try to add an epilogue or some one-shots, so feel free to leave requests if there's something you wanted to see. Thank you!


End file.
